The Animation

Grow fade in.

I could have easily added in a fade in circle with the word grow using Premiere Pro, but i chose to do this part of the animation using cell also so it would not look out of place, or too smooth at the end of the animation. to do this i simply slowly faded out the tree in each frame.

and faded in the circle at the same time.

once the circle was faded in i started to rub out the second circle layer that was covering the word grow, to make it look as if the word was being scribbled in.

The raining triangles.

I created the raining triangles by adding a layer ontop of the deer image with the triangles on. Each frame  i just gradually moved the traingles down the page. Keeping the deer in the same place.

The second layer of triangles where actually on the same layer but the were covered by the white rectangles to make the appear as if they were falling at a different time. Where as it is all the same layer.

Lens Blur.

I added the out of focus effect in using after effect's lens blur effect. Which allows you to change blur intensity and the depth of field. 

I timed each blur so that it's at it's most out of focus when certain piano notes come in during the song.

Shades.

each frame is a slightly different shade to give the uneven effect of hand drawn cell animation, like Steamboat Willie. 

The Design Process.

Each frame was drawn in using Photoshop. I took my Illustrator drawing of my deer and imported it as a smart object into photoshop. I then copied my background layer and placed it on top of my illustration, gradually rubbing that overlapping layer out a bit at a time and saved each Image as a Jpeg as i went along to create my frames.

Each jpeg was numbered accordingly so i could import the sequence into after effects easily.

once the deer was introduced fully into the frame i then did the same process for each shape introduced. 

Splitting the deer in half proved to be a very time consuming process. Each frame i had to gradually rotate each side separately and in doing so it moved the 2 sides out of place so each side also had to be repositioned back into it's original place to avoid it jumping all over the place in the finished sequence. 

Once all 340 frames were completed i then imported the sequences into after effects for editing. Each part is played at a slightly different fps so i could achieve the smoothness i wanted. For example, the starting of the running ink at the beginning of the animation is 12fps then the gradual creation of the deer is 20fps and the falling shapes at around 25fps.

The tree.

I wanted the tree in my animation to be pretty simple. But also look like it could be a dandelion or flower. I went with the black silhouette so it doesn't seem to out of place with the other shapes in my animation.